DOJ Files Motion To Intervene In Trump’s Lawsuit Against “Big Tech” Firms; Says Don’t Rule on Section 230; Biden Campaigned on Revocation

WASHINGTON, D.C. – According to the America First Policy Institute, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a Motion to Intervene in President Donald J. Trump’s class action lawsuit against Facebook, supporting the Constitutionality of Section 230. In its defense of the statute, the DOJ contends that the Court should avoid ruling on Section 230’s constitutionality, but if it must, the Court should reject President Trump’s arguments on the merits.

In addition to the DOJ’s Motion to Intervene, Facebook filed their long-anticipated Motion to Dismiss. President Trump’s legal team is expected to respond to this motion and, by doing so, will continue working hard to protect Americans’ First Amendment rights.

“Social media companies, including Facebook, use their power to silence the voices of those who disagree with Silicon Valley’s obvious social views and political agenda. The fact that President Biden’s DOJ has filed a Motion to Intervene in this case, involving the censorship of a sitting United States President, tends to indicate the two are working in concert with one another to censor specific people and messages. When Congress passed Section 230 in 1996, it was intended to be used as a tool to help internet companies compete in the new global marketplace — it is now used as a shield that enables Facebook and others to violate American’s most basic right to free speech — it is time to demand accountability.”

Statement from America First Policy Institute’s Constitutional Litigation Partnership

On Tuesday, January 18, 2022, the America First Policy Institute also announced that Trump’s legal team had just the evening before filed their Response to YouTube’s Motion to Dismiss and their Reply in support of President Trump’s Motion for Preliminary Injunction. In November 2021, the Justice Department also moved to protect Twitter.

“The United States hereby intervenes in this action for the limited purpose of defending the constitutionality of Section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act of 1996,” government attorneys wrote in the Trump suit targeting Twitter.

Oddly enough, in a December 2019 interview with The New York Times, then candidate Joe Biden fiercely supported dismantling Section 230, especially when it came to Facebook specifically naming Zuckerberg, stating:

“The idea that it’s [Facebook] a tech company is that Section 230 should be revoked, immediately should be revoked, number one. For Zuckerberg and other platforms… It should be revoked because it is not merely an internet company. It is propagating falsehoods they know to be false, and we should be setting standards not unlike the Europeans are doing relative to privacy.”

– Joe Biden, 2020 campaign trail.

The intervening brief comes just two years after Joe Biden “campaigned prominently on repealing Section 230” throughout his 2020 presidential campaign run, the group said; now they would like to protect it.